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Over the past two years I have been piecing together a Super Mario Brothers game designed to continue the wonder of the original side-scrolling series. It has finally reached the point where I can release it on the world and be proud of my creation. There is nothing left to add feature-wise to the game although I am definently still making more levels and possibly some new enemies. There will eventually be bosses too.

I designed this game as a mixture of all the best parts of other Mario games to date, and a few innovations on my part. There are three powerups besides the mushroom which include the standard fireflower, the hammer suit, and also the carrot that gives you floaty bunny ears. When you get a new item your current one is stored at the top of the screen like in Super Mario World. The poison mushroom, powerstar and P-Block also make appearances. Mario can also get the wingcap from Mario64 which allows him to fly for a while. Some pipes are enterable and there are functional doors also.

The level is timed by a burning fuse at the top of the screen. At the end of each level, there is a spinning wheel over a block which he must hit. When he hits the block a point comes out of it and stops the wheel either on a green or a red mushroom. If the wheel lands on a green mushroom, one of the red coins at the top of the screen turns green, and vice versa for landing on a red coin. When all of the colored coins at the top of the screen are the same color, Mario gets a 1UP.

The bitmaps of Mario are twice the resolution he is drawn in because at some point I hope to get someone to draw or enhance more detailed sprites. But until then, he looks fine.

The game is packaged with a world/level editor which is pretty straightforward to use. Some day I will write documentation on how to use it but if you really want to make your own levels, the editor is easy to figure out. The game is also designed to support mods.

I found the game really difficult to play.
I'm so used to controlling mario with my left hand and jumping with my
right. Overall it looks really cool. I'm glad you've made
your own levels, it really makes it a refreshing game.

Most of the people who play it the first time tell me it's a little
difficult to control with the keyboard, but once they get used to it,
it seems to flow. The jumping is a little different than other
Mario games but I find it suits the game style and levels well.
You can change the controls to WSAD for the arrows and some other keys
for jump and run and shoot if you want to run around with your left
hand. The Setup Controls program included allows you to change
the default keyboard keys and also set up a joystick or gamepad.
Also, this game gets hard fast because there are not many levels and I
wanted it to be challenging to finish. The final version will
ease in to the difficult levels allowing time for getting used to
controlling Mario.

There was no way I was going to use old levels for this game.
I was not going to make many levels at first but I got used to it and
now I plan on the final version of the default mod to have 8 full
worlds with an average of 10 levels each. Keep your eye on the
site for updates if you enjoyed it.

I bought a better game controller so I could play this game. The
game plays much better with an analog gamepad. One minor issue is
that you can't use the gamepad to pick a map/game and to start the
game. I know I'm being picky, but that's about the only major
fault I can find.

WOW! Very nice work. Hats off to a great job. Change the sprites and the levels and sell this puppy! Other than the game playing a little slow/choppy it ran at an acceptable pace. Again, very impressive work.

Thanks so much everyone I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it.
Thanks also for the criticisms, I want to make this game as enjoyable
as possible for everyone.

Aztecgames, the Logitech Dual Action gamepad is the pad I actually use while debugging the game, I love it.
Yes, this entire thing from the ground up was built using Visual Basic
6.0 with direct X 7 and a bit of 8 for the rotating objects. I
will eventually fix the problem with Alt-Tabbing, it's mainly just my
lazy coding style.

Walrus, I was planning on changing
all of the sprites to the same resolution as the Goombas and
items. They were all originally low-res but I started slowly
retracing them in my spare time. Now some of them are high-res
and some are not. This currently is not a priority as I am
working on more levels, coding bosses and new enemies, and debugging
small problems I run accross. Since I am hearing this game is
decently hard from most people, I will be adding a mid-point save
feature to the levels. Thanks for the idea!

dxgame,
the reason I made this game was to give it away to everyone to enjoy
and mod to it's fullest extent. Despite the zillions of hours I
put in to making it I honestly couldn't care less what people do with
it short of slap their name on it and pass it off as there own. I
want as many people as possible to be able to play it therefor it will
always be freeware and I will be posting mods on my site once people
learn the ways of the editor. I'm glad to hear it would be a
moneymaker though .

The refining of the graphics is actually quite a large project
considering the level ground tiles are also low-resolution. If
anyone feels like frittering away hours drawing meaningless graphics
for someone elses project at no pay, please contact me.

There will be another update with a couple new levels and the layout
for the actual first world by March 2nd. Also I have decided to
make NINE worlds because I always wanted to play a Mario game with nine
worlds. The worlds will be as follows in this order:

There will be 7 to 12 levels per world and always a castle or
two. Until the next update, enjoy yourselves. By the way,
make sure you try the 'Races' mod if you have skill and haven't
already. All of them are passable!

Peace, Jeremy

PS If anyone has boss ideas for the worlds or for the final bowser,
please post them, I'm dry. Also if anyone wants to contribute a
world map for one of the worlds please do I am no artist as you can tell by my tracing of a corner of the Commander Keen Dreams map screen with Flash.

I fixed the Alt-Tab crashing problem. I also fixed some minor
glitches involving the koopa troopas. I started making Grassy
Grove and it contains 2 levels from the pre-relelease 11-level-world
and 2 new ones so far. The fourth level of the world is not done
but it is in there anyways with an exit at the beginning because the
fifth level is done. The map screens, especially the Mushroom
Kingdom map screen, are by no means the final versions. I just
sketched them up to have something to build levels around.

Update March 10th - Entire first world of main mod completed including
fully functional boss, although there he has no sound and the graphics
are definently temporary. Main menu changed to a window and skin
capability included. Mushroom Kingdom map screen finished
also. Grassy grove map will be done next update.

Here is a screenshot of the main window on my computer. This
might be caused by mixing scale modes for the different controls.
The best solution is to make sure everything's scale mode is twips.

However, the game is looking really good. I actually made some
progress. I can't figure out how to kill the giant gooba in the
first castle. Other than
that, it plays really well. The time limit kind of sucks.
I'm used to Super Mario World, which didn't have a time limit.

I'm likely reverting to a full screen menu soon but ill fix the window
for the next update, thanks for pointing that out. If you want to
figure out how to kill the boss on your own then don't read the rest of
this post. Every once and a while he spits a black thing that
slides around. It actually acts like a shell, you have to stomp
on it then throw it up at the boss. To throw up, just hold up
when you release the run/carry button. You have to hit him four
times and each time, the rate of him spitting goombas increases a
little. When he dies, you can then reach the exit door. I
will add code to disable the time limit in any area which contains a
boss for the next update. Since I own the boss every time having
designed him , it never really occured to me that time running out would get annoying. Thanks for the heads up Eric!

I thought that might be the way to kill him, but by the time he spits
one out I get killed because there are a million goombas on the screen
comming at me. Anyone else have problems killing this first boss?

I updated the game today and totally redid the site. Not alot new
in the game besides new graphics and sounds for the boss. I also
made the boss quite a bit easier by slowing down the crazy guy you hit
him with and lowering his goomba-spitting frequency. I won't be
updating the game for a few weeks because I'm tired of making levels
and it's spring break

hi there im new here i downloaded the game and loved it, i just dont know how to kill the giant in Gambos Lair, can you please be more specific on how to do it? i´ve tried and tried for dozens of times and nothing happens, i cant release the shell. ill appretiate your help.